There are a few #OTD posts about the fall of the Confederate capital.

In the History.com post linked above, one item of particular interest to me here lurks behind this sentence: “On the evening of April 2, the Confederate government fled the city with the army right behind.“ But they did more than flee. In a move that was all at once understandable and tragic (from a historian’s perspective), the records of the Confederate Secret Service were burned due to fear of possible reprisals against Southern-sympathizers (spies). So to this day, a hole exists in our knowledge of the extent and efficiency of Confederate intelligence capabilities. This knowledge-gap helped develop what historian Edwin Fishel called a “mythology“ of Civil War intelligence, where beautiful southern maidens and daring spies stayed one step ahead of Union generals. Even today, many elements of this mythology linger on, propagated as they have been over the decades by popular historians and even some academics.